With the widespread use of digital consumer electronic image-capturing devices such as digital cameras and camera/video phones, the size of consumers' digital image collections continue to increase very rapidly. As such collections grow ever larger and increasingly more unwieldy, a person is less able to handle the sheer volume of images in these collections.
A user may capture hundreds or thousands (or more) of digital photographs and videos over the course of time using image-capturing and multiuse devices. The task of organizing captured photographs often falls to the user of the device. Some conventional approaches provide a crude user interface that allows a user to sift through photographs using a timeline. Other conventional approaches allow a person to manually tag and organize photographs into virtual albums.
Software applications that manage media (e.g., digital photographs and videos) collections have become widely adopted as the amount of digital media, including images, has grown. Because of their large display, processing power, and memory capacity, most of these conventional approaches are concentrated on use with personal “desktop” computers. Using ample room of the desktop computer's large displays, the desktop user interface offers a broad workspace for a user to view and manage a large catalogue of digital photographs.
As evidenced by the seeming ubiquity of mobile personal communication devices (e.g., the so-called “smartphones”), mobile communication and computing technology has rapidly developed. With the processing power and memory capacity of such mobile technology, it is possible to have large media collections on mobile personal communication devices or have access to such collections via high-speed data telecommunication networks.
While the power and memory capacities have increased, a typical mobile personal communication device still has a small display and, consequently, more constrained user interface capabilities than a desktop computer. Accordingly, a user of a typical mobile personal communication device is forced to abandon his mobile environment and move to a desktop computer in order to view and manage his large media catalogue.